


Tethers

by Zebooboo



Series: VoG Boys Week 2020 [4]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Anxiety, I make my own tropes, M/M, Multi, Red String of Fate, Soulmates, tropes shredded to pieces
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23786716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zebooboo/pseuds/Zebooboo
Summary: He wonders if her colours for him are complain-and-he-gets-work-done-cause-he-is-a-sucker-for-efficiency.For VoG Week 2020.
Relationships: Kabr/Pahanin/Praedyth (Destiny)
Series: VoG Boys Week 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709875
Kudos: 15
Collections: Works about the Vault of Glass Fireteam





	Tethers

**Author's Note:**

> I spit blood writing this one, please enjoy <3

Praedyth is plucking at his threads, lurid pink and solid green twisted around each other, all faded and faint. They extend out a couple of feet from his finger, stacked over each other and simply fade out, along with the rest of his bond threads. Some anchoring him to the people in the room, some to others. He twists the strands  _ love-and-self-reliance-and-balance _ around his finger then lets them unspool, again, again, again...

He listens absently to Taeko-3 trying to coax a volunteer or two for a research expedition to Venus but it seems none from the actual research team feel up to going head to head with Vex for their parts and possibly a nest of Ahamkara alone. He won’t envy the poor bastard who will have to put up with her outrageous standards.

The deep brown and orange line,  _ reliability-and-communication, _ tying him to Taeko bounces and then her hand falls down over his shoulder and she leans down to whisper. “I need a fucking drink, nobody wants to go and we  _ need  _ researchers on the expeditions.”

Taeko sounds ran down and haggard. If they don't get new material they can't continue with the research and if they have no progress, the project will get shut down. Taeko is the project leader, she's the one getting the brunt of the pressure from the board. 

He pats her arm and resigns himself to being the poor bastard to have to deal with Vex, dragons and Taeko’s demands and Asher’s needling. Oh, and getting no sympathy of course. 

He wonders if her colours for him are  _ complain-and-he-gets-work-done-cause-he-is-a-sucker-for-efficiency.  _

“Let’s go get that drink then, I think I need one too.”

\---

Most of the research team is completely sloshed at this point. Warlocks, a couple of Titans and a lone Hunter thrown in for variety, is what Taeko says and bursts into giggles, her brightly coloured drink splashing out of her highball glass.

Praedyth puts a steadying hand on her shoulder, even when he has to brace on the counter himself. Taeko bats his hand away and clinks her glass with the people on the table next to them before turning back to their little corner on the bar.

Her voice comes out warbled at the beginning but the backlights of her throat light up brightly. “Alright, stop complaining and listen, I know a team I can ask to tag along to watch your back on this.”

He tries to mumble in his drink, gulps his mouthful and points at Taeko with an affronted expression. They’ve had this conversation twice already before even getting to the bar! “I told you, I don’t need a fireteam to just get samples Taeko!”

But the other Warlock simply waves a hand in his face and downs her drink and calls up her Ghost. “Nah, you’re going into Vex-ing territory with an Ahamkara infestation, you  _ need _ backup. Actually, they should be awake, lemme call them over.”

He growls and clumsily tries to shush her but she’s already shooting a voice message with a high-pitched laugh, leaning back and back away from his reach on her stool until Praedyth thinks she’ll just fall off.

Her Ghost zips out of his grasp and shakes its parts in a huff before disappearing. Praedyth groans and turns around to ask the bartender for another drink. Between Taeko’s ribbing and his own wounded pride, he won’t be liking these new teammates of his.

An hour later he’s forgotten about the coming arrivals when the bar's door opens again, drawn back into the fold of bad science puns, a card game he can’t believe he’s still winning and Taeko popping her crossed ankles on his shoulder from her taller stool behind him.

He barely notices when Taeko leaps up to her feet to embrace a Hunter while he relieves the more sober of his colleagues of glimmer and trinkets and bets and every kind of favour he can squeeze out of his brain right now.   
  
He’s gathering up his spoils from the table with a smirk that probably makes him look absolutely looney, when he blinks slowly at the colour snapping out of his fingers to the other end of the room, suddenly more vibrant and real than he’s seen the twin threads ever before.

_ Lovesafetycompassion  _ and a lump forming in his throat as he looks up. A man is staring wide eyed at him and Praedyth freezes. He watches the man glance between Praedyth and his right hand and swallow thickly. Then he grabs the shoulder of the other person ( _ who is hugging Taeko, oh pleasepleasepleaseletitnotbetheteamshewastalkingabout-)  _ and he can't hear what he says but he can see the second man's smile drop as he lets Taeko go, brows furrowing before he looks down at his own hand. 

Praedyth can see the moment reality drops on him as well, then the weight of both their shocked gazes settles on his shoulders and panicked disbelief slams on him. 

He Blinks away. 

\---

Thankfully, blessedly, he gets no messages or visitors while he walks around his apartment and curses himself and his idiocy the next day. Well, except Teako asking him what the hell happened last night and he left before she could introduce him to his 'temporary fireteam', but absolutely nothing more. 

Which means those two people never told her anything and now they are avoiding him. He brings his hand up to look at the threads, still there, unchanged and twined around each other. 

_ He's so stupid! _

Why did he leave like that? Sure he was a bit drunk, sure he was a bit tired, sure he might have been on the verge of a panic attack. 

But what was he thinking?! 

He groans and rolls over in his bed, smothers his face in the pillows. If he died of suffocation now, maybe his Ghost would take pity on him? He turns pleading eyes at his Ghost, but it only blinks at him and carries on chatting on the Ghost network.

He sighs in disappointment. 

A ping from his handheld on the bedside table makes him jump but he dreads actually looking at it. 

He looks at the light of the screen bouncing on the wall until the notification fades away. Then he goes to clean the bathroom instead. Then his kitchenette. Then he starts compiling a bit of research he'd done a week ago at home that he never bothered to bring along to the office. 

Then he gets another ping and the thought of it being Them that found his contact details from Taeko becomes too much and he quickly lights up the handheld to check. 

But it's only Teako asking for confirmation on his part for the expedition tomorrow. Everything is ready to go. Which means They accepted her request and now he has to pull through without looking like an idiot. Again. 

Praedyth feels such relief he goes cross-eyed. He can't really figure out why. 

\---

When he sees Them again, Praedyth is clenching his teeth so hard he thinks they'll crack. A Hunter and a Titan with full gear and a stocked ship and Teako chatting away and he wants to throttle her and then toss himself from the Walls. 

"Hey! Finally get to meet you for real, you looked to be in a hurry the other night. I'm Pahanin, this is Kabr, we're your ever amazing and reliable backup!" 

Pahanin is cheery and has a smile that makes Praedyth's belly clench up and Kabr looks nervously reserved but friendly and all Praedyth can do is nod stiffly and rasp out. "Praedyth, thank you for the help." He winces at his own tone. 

Pahanin falters visibly and Taeko is drilling holes through his skull with her stare. Praedyth sees Kabr bite his lip and look away sharply and all he wants is for the ground to open up and swallow him whole. 

"Right uh… yeah, we'll be sticking to you like a hungry cephalopod while you do your thing undisturbed. All slickity split." Pahanin’s smile looks strained at the cold reception and moves back, patting Kabr on the shoulder as he goes, as if coaxing the crestfallen Titan along to get inside the ship. 

Taeko gives him another look but hands him the manifest and walks away. Praedyth feels like an absolute heel as he walks past Kabr waiting for him to board before closing the ramp. 

It's a very silent ride to Venus and Praedyth wants to fold himself down into nothing.

\---

The actual mission gets completed fairly fast and efficiently and Praedyth tries not to notice the easy manner with which they all worked together. Pahanin helping set up an EMP field so he can harvest parts en masse without fighting with little instruction. And the relief of having actual help is enough to break his deep rooted nervousness and shoot Pahanin a smile. The returning smile had made Praedyth’s stomach jump.

He tries not to linger on how easily they danced out of an Ahamkara’s territory on Sparrow back. Kabr not hesitating to pull him along on his Sparrow while Pahanin pulled Void from the Light, entangling the howling and cursing beast even as they plugged their ears by shouting about propulsion engines and anti-grav systems until Pahanin caught up to them and asked them to please stop doing more work than necessary on this trip. And please hide any research you do, I hate washing Marcus' remains from the floor whenever he tests new ideas. 

A delighted laugh had escaped Praedyth at the wry comment and instantly Kabr's face lit up. He felt red creep up his neck and swallow his ears and Praedyth coughs and gets off the Titan’s Sparrow. He tries to ignore the awkward shift Kabr does when he stops having to over compensate the balance on his Sparrow for two riders, like he'd been comfortable. 

He’d been awkward and cold on the way to Venus and now that the ice seems to be thawing he’s left floundering. There was a bubble of excitement in his chest, an injection of euphoria that put a grin on his face that he could see mirrored on the others’ faces. Praedyth sees a tiny speck of  _ blue-trust-loyalty _ seeping into his threads by the end of the day and he wonders if it could be that easy.

He stalls when they get ready to move locations, clutches his samples to his chest and bites his lips _. Trust-loyalty, _ or  _ blue-coldness. _ And maybe it really is hard.

He stares at his hands, he stares at Pahanin's hands, he stares at Kabr’s hands. Watches as Pahanin takes Kabr’s hand, passing over a fresh special ammo clip, and plants a kiss on the knuckle. Kabr smiles and shoves the clip at Pahanin’s face and wonders what colours they have for each other. 

When they call back to him, he jumps and transmats his things away hurriedly. He calls his Sparrow and guns the engine until he’s far far away  _ (but not too far) _ .

He misses the looks of dawning realisation they shoot between them, cheeky smiles matching when they follow him to the next area.

\---

“There’s white on my threads now…”   
  
Praedyth hears it by accident, late in the night. They’re camping in the cramped space of what’s left of a library, massive leaves and vibrant undergrowth making the ground soft and the light from the fire faint.   
  
And now he is wide awake with a spark in his chest.  _ White-wholeness-completeness? _

Pahanin keeps whispering and he can hear Kabr’s low responses but he can’t make out words. His fingers flex and he swallows. When the courage seems to be fleeing, he wiggles a hand out of the covers and stares.

Lurid pink  _ love-nurture  _ and deep  _ growth-balance-growth _ green, speckled with light  _ trust  _ blue and he twists them around, loops them around his finger and lets them unspool, again and again and again…

\---

He dies the next day and it’s entirely his fault. He gets too distracted, too focused on the idea of catching a glimpse of something new in his bond colours, he gets shot out of the very air.

Shame eats him up whole. Irritated at himself for getting distracted in the middle of a fight. But he can’t really remember to do any of that when he blinks his eyes open again. Not with Pahanin grinning over him and Kabr asking him if he needs a moment, Vex corpses surrounding them.   
  
He swallows and snatches the concerned and teasing looks and locks them away in his mind to keep. Then he takes the offered hands with a sheepish smile and lets them pull him up.

He’s elbow deep in a Minotaur’s guts when he spies a splash of colour. A streak of cautionary yellow and he breaks out in cold sweat.  _ Fear-cowardice  _ in bright, near neon yellow.   
  
It’s when Kabr pats him on the back that he realises he’s been stuck staring at his hand for the past ten minutes. His teeth clamp shut and he holds his hand to his chest as if burned, as if anybody could possibly see his hues.

A groove forms between Kabr’s brows. He is silent as he pries Praedyth’s hand away gently and the Warlock freezes. His  _ cowardice-caution _ catches hooks in his mind until Kabr presses his lips to his knuckles and he feels red burn across his cheeks. His mouth drops open and a choked noise catches on his tongue.

“Kabr, I think you’re breaking him!”

Pahanin grinning over Kabr’s shoulder is the final straw.   
  
He Blinks away.

\---

Only there’s not really anywhere to go to this time. So he tears his way back to the LZ and pings the location on the team channel.

He takes a moment to tear his gloves off and touch his knuckles carefully, ears still feeling warm.

He doesn’t know how to feel about the yellow having darkened to something mellow, the dark blue to a light turquise.

\---   
  
"I used to study these so closely, you know." 

He says it into the silence of the ship when the others return, hands splayed out in a riot of colour and hues and lines, frayed and whole and strong and snapped and cut. And Praedyth is not looking at their faces, can’t bear to just yet.

He feels Pahanin sit next to him and Kabr across them.   
  
"I still do. They're not always wrong." Praedyth’s eyes flick to Kabr and the Titan bites his lip, caught at something he sees in Praedyth’s eyes and the Warlock looks away, hoping against hope that he’ll keep talking, not stop on account of him.

Pahanin tries to pick the conversation slowly. "They're just more attuned to every person, you know? Personalised, like when an octopus is setting an ambush and takes the colours of its environment for the perfect trap."   
  
He looks incredulously at Pahanin for a moment until a laugh bubbles up and he can’t keep it back. So far he’d thought that Pahanin had some kind of note set and he kept throwing metaphors to cephalopods as a way to unnerve him but no, it seems the Hunter really does love the critters.   
  
"Hey, it's a perfectly good example!"

Kabr chuckles at Pahanin’s fake hurt tone and finally the dark mood starts to lift out of Praedyth’s mind.

It really isn’t easy. And it’s not hard. It’s different, same as anything, same as everything.

“So,” Pahanin says when they’ve all stopped laughing at his expense. “How about that drink you cheated us out of the other day?”

Praedyth wipes mirthful tears from his eyes and looks up at them, expectant and hopeful and then at his finger. Loops  _ lovepink-and-balancegreen-and-claritytorquise-and-cheeryellow  _ round and round and round and sees them bounce back thick and sturdy between them

“I’d love to.”

**Author's Note:**

> As always a big thank you to Gil! <3


End file.
